#5: Coming of Age, Wet Saris, April Zoo and a Beggarly Stroll, Lessons from Pain

Paper Reduction Act: No paper was used in the making of this letter and it’s pure veg.
Estimated reading time: Less than 10 minutes.
Estimated pondering, a lifetime...

Coming of age. Mid-April, the Indian friend of another volunteer here invited us to attend the coming-of-age party for his teenaged neighbor girl. In the local language it is called manjal niratuvizhya, meaning “yellow water ceremony.” The yellow comes from turmeric, a ubiquitously Indian herb which is used for ritual purification and medical antibiotic purposes, as well as a major ingredient in curry. When a girl has her first menses, it is a very important time to celebrate and all of her family and friends gather for the event. When we walked into the party hall for the coming-of-age ceremony, we were seated in the very front and I felt really out of place because we were total strangers to the guests and the culture. So I tried to be inconspicuous. Ha. White girl in a sari is hard to hide. I sat demurely, feeling out of place, until I heard cool Indian music playing and I started bobbing my head and smiling. Several teenage girls across the room saw us and smiled back, and then they sat by us and were our best friends the rest of the night. I was a most grateful guest.

Wet saris. Let me explain how I ended up in the Indian Ocean in a full sari. When the school year ended 16 April and all of the kids went home for the six-week holiday, the housemothers wanted to take a day trip to the beach to relax before they headed to their native places. Some of us volunteers travel two hours each way to go to church in Chennai on the coast, and all eight of the housemothers and some of their children plus some office staff joined us for all three hours of church so they could go to the beach afterward. I actually wasn’t planning on joining them, but the staff bus was so packed with people and we had some extra space in our bus, so we evened things out and took both buses. Since I hadn’t planned to go to the beach, I was only wearing the sari I wore to church (not that anyone else had a change of clothes, though). Once we were on the beach, my friends took me to the water to wade, and then wading turned into waves splashing higher and higher and then I said, “The heck with it, my underwear’s wet, I’m going in.” So I went for a little swim in my sari, until it started to get unraveled and wrap around my feet and arms, a style that makes it most difficult to stay afloat. Needless to say, we had a fun time oceaning.

And Then There Was One. By the third week of April, all of the other volunteers had left except for Jim and Pam Gates (who replaced the Hendershot family as managing directors), myself, and Lanie, a “pearl lady” as I like to call her. She’s from the Philippines and came to India with Wendy Bird to teach pearl necklace-making as a microcredit enterprise for women in a leprosy colony. Then Lanie left while I was in Delhi first week of May, so it’s very quiet at RSO lately. I find at least two struggles with this quiet: I miss having people to talk to and joke with (I crack myself up but it's not the same...), and I'm not spending as much time as I would like in the colonies. It's not like I'm ever bored, but I'm happiest when I can lose myself in service to others balanced with my April time. When I returned from Delhi mid-May (more on that trip next post), I still had some vacation days before the medical team resumed. Working on the computer, basking in the sun with a book, exercising to my heart's content---these have limited happiness. Like I said in an earlier post, sometimes my ironic challenge in India has been that it's been too easy and comfortable. I am anxious to get back to work and make some more work opportunities in the afternoons because the colonies are half-day trips.

April Zoo and a Beggarly Stroll. Lanie and I went to the Chennai zoo one Saturday in April and I have to say, they have a pretty good selection of animals. There’s a pretty interesting selection of people, too. I felt like a walking special exhibit as the only Caucasian in the park and many smiles from curious strangers. The highlight of these encounters is definitely the friendly family from Coimbature, Tamil Nadu (about eight hours by train). A woman and I exchanged smiles and then she asked if she could get a photo with me. I said sure, and then suddenly I was surrounded by all of her extended family, jostling to get a place by me and then all shaking my hand afterward and giving me their phone number with an invitation to visit them in Coimbature. Every time we passed them in the park, they were so gracious and happy to see me. I am never sure what to think about this attention showered on me by complete strangers. It is certainly pleasant, but in some ways it also doesn’t feel right because they seem to be loving me for my light skin with a smiling face—no other reason that I can tell—and would not show that deference for a local stranger. Such was usually my experience in Uganda as well, of being loved by strangers for no apparent reason. But I’m realizing that I have a similar response in reverse for Africans in the U.S. and I expect I will do the same with Indians when I get back home. More next post on the fascination of foreignness.

After the zoo, Lanie and I had a time spree while we waited for the Gates to finish their shopping spree and all return to our village. Rather than sit for hours in the parking lot waiting, I decided to explore down the street. Believe it or not, but in the month that I had been in India, the only places I had been outside of our campus and some leprosy villages was a little bit of food shopping and lounging on a beach resort—limited culturally, in my opinion. This was my first venture on a hectic, overwhelming Indian street and I felt like I was seeing another side of India. Feelings of vulnerability and uncomfortability confronted me. Several beggars asked me for money or food, and I had to search within myself and ask, “What do I do, Lord?” I know I can’t help every beggar out there, and I don’t believe that giving money or even food is always the answer—in fact, may even contribute to the problem of poverty. If you’re familiar with the Book of Mormon, I would refer here to Mosiah 4, a beautiful chapter about how we are all indebted to God and all are beggars before Him, so we can’t judge another who asks us for money. We are directed to give if we have, and if we have not, to say within our hearts that we would give if we could, doing all these things with wisdom and order. Every beggar I face, the question returns, “What should I do in this case?” I prefer to at least ask their name and learn something of their story, to make it a human exchange, rather than a mechanic doling of funds. My Tamil is less than rudimentary and the same goes for most of these people’s English. Best of all, I believe, is to donate to agencies and organizations that I trust are using resources wisely for sustainable development—which is why I am in India anyway. What did I end up doing? I gave one woman a banana and denied the others. She seemed to say yes when I gesturingly asked her if she wanted it, but when I gave it to her, she looked at me, and looked at the banana, and looked at the others around us, like, “A banana?”

To my reader: I’m really interested to hear your thoughts about when and how to give, and when to withhold. Email me with stories and your comments at bodywork4peace@yahoo.com or post to my blog.

Lessons from Pain. I think about pain. I feel it also—more than I want. And I’ve been realizing on a profound level how important it is to happiness and health. Working with leprosy patients, I’m seeing some consequences of a poorly communicating pain system in the body. Leprosy is not exactly a skin disease as many suppose, but it is bacteria that attack the neural system (which in turn affect the skin). The bacteria seem to prefer living in the cooler parts of the body, such as the feet and hands, which swell up and constrict the tendons, contributing to “claw hand” and “claw foot,” something like a very severe case of arthritis. And as the peripheral nerves lose feeling, the leprosy-afflicted person can’t feel when there is a cut, scrape, burn, or rat chewing a toe off in the night. So he does nothing about the injury, and it then gets infected and even gangrenous and might need amputation.

Ulcers are a huge problem with leprosy-afflicted people, and it seems they occur largely because the nerves in the feet don’t register when there has been too much pressure and wear on the feet while walking, so the person doesn’t make subtle changes in gait to take off the pressure. For example, if you start getting a blister, you will limp to take pressure off that tender area until it’s resolved. I have washed dozens of leprosy patients’ feet, and I have seen the deepest of ulcers that go through the thick layers of tissue to the bone. And I must say, as difficult as it may be, I am glad when the patients feel some pain in the washing—they have some sensation and their prognosis is better. Those who feel no pain have little motivation to care for themselves.

Another interesting feature of leprosy is that patients often feel disconnected from their feet and hands. Because the patient can’t feel them, it seems they are not a part of the body and, therefore, have less reason to care for them. Paul Brand, a hand surgeon who grew up with missionary parents in Southern India in the early 1900s and later pioneered research and treatment for leprosy patients, quoted a patient in his book, The Gift of Pain: Why We Hurt and What We Can Do about It, “I’m suffering in my mind because I can’t suffer in my body.” Now one of my favorite books, I recommend it for anyone who seeks a greater appreciation for the difficult teacher we all share, Pain. Some highlights:
• “Pain, my body’s way of alerting me to danger, will use whatever volume is necessary to grab my attention. It was their very deafness to this chorus of messages that caused my leprosy patients to destroy themselves.”
• “Pain is not the enemy, but the loyal scout announcing the enemy. And yet—here is the central paradox of my life—after spending a lifetime among people who destroy themselves for lack of pain, I still find it difficult to communicate an appreciation for pain to people who have no such defect. Pain truly is the gift nobody wants. I can think of nothing more precious for those who suffer from congenital painlessness, leprosy, diabetes, and other nerve disorders. But people who already own this gift rarely value it. Usually, they resent it.”
• “As a society gains the ability to limit suffering, it loses the ability to cope with what suffering remains. …Certainly, the ‘less advanced’ societies do not fear physical pain as much.”
• “I like to remind myself and others that even in bodily processes normally regarded as enemies, we can find a reason to be grateful. …Indeed, virtually every bodily activity that we view with irritation or disgust—blister, callus, fever, sneeze, cough, vomiting, and of course, pain—is an emblem of the body’s self-protection.”
• Intensifiers of Pain: Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness, and helplessness.
• Reducers of Pain: Gratitude (possible in all situations), listening to the body (pain is a loyal friend), activity (do as much as you can despite pain or limitations), self-mastery (prayer, meditation, and fasting), and community (strength and support from others).
• “Happiness tends to recede from those who pursue it. Ever elusive, it appears at unexpected moments, as a by-product rather than a product.”
• “Pain and pleasure come to us not as opposites but as twins, strangely joined.”

As always, I'm interested to hear your thoughts and comments. You can write at bodywork4peace@yahoo.com.